


Causality

by ladyflowdi



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Angst, Developing Relationship, Episode: s08e20 Moebius (2), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-01
Updated: 2005-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A forgotten scene from Moebius 2 and an alternate ending.  Daniel, AU!Jack, and what was, what is, and what can never be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Causality

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my LJ-to-AO3 project.

Egyptian evenings had a bite to them. Glancing out over dunes illuminated with a back draft of light from the setting sun, where only hours before said sun had steadily baked the fine dark grains into powder, it was nearly impossible to equate the cool, evening atmosphere with the hard heat of the day. The nighttime chimes and heavy drums of the peasants at their nightly feast was a cheerful counterpoint to the quietly crackling fire in the pit a little ways away. Happy red flames curled around a small clay pot, the gray plumes of smoke carrying the rich scent of what could only be ink. The night tasted like spring and the slightly rotten tang of the desert itself; of animals living and dying alongside human beings, just as it had been for thousands of years.

It was a beautiful thing, evening in this little village. Nestled against the _iteru aa,_ the most important waterway in the Ancient Egyptian world, the small tribe rested for the evening after a hard day’s work at the beautiful river’s banks and the silt fields where their crops grew. Thousands of years from ever seeing a Roman soldier in their midst, these sovereign people of Egypt led a simple life in sharp contrast to the lives of the visitors among them. 

The Egyptians reaped plentiful crops from the _iteru aa_ during it’s annual floods, taking the fish from her womb and the plentiful drinking water from her hands. They harvested the _mehyt_ that grew like gentle hair from her head and used it for everything – baskets, shoes, boats, their very homes. They wove _mehyt_ thread into linen for their clothing, and traded it with the Nubians to the North for anything they could not create themselves.

A simple, comfortable life.

His belly full of wild roasted goose and the lush vegetables that the tribe grew, Dahn’yel sat astride the fire’s light guiding Kewa’s hands over the _mehyt_ sheets only the scribes in the temples were permitted to make. Dahn’yel broke many rules in regards to their world, and had taught the tribe many things it’s people had never expected to ever understand. He had traveled from other parts of the empire and brought many skills with him, which he gave to Kewa and his people. They could now create ink, build thick _mehyt_ sheets from the wild roots growing alongside the _iteru aa,_ and catch the fish with elaborate creations Dahn’yel spoke as ‘nets’, already in use where the _iteru aa_ kissed the ocean. He had even taught them how to build spears, long enough to kill the hippopotami that destroyed their reed boats with their enormous girth and evil temperament. 

It was because of Dahn’yel that they had not gone hungry for many moons. And it would be a great loss to the village when the time came for Dahn’yel to leave with the strangers who had descended upon their simple existence.

Even Kewa, a boy who had only seen nine harvests, understood that something had changed with the arrival of the others. They were similar to Dahn’yel in shape and appearance, and spoke with a foreign, northern tongue Kewa had never heard before. 

Kewa looked over Dahn’yel’s calm, guiding hands at the stranger sitting with them. The others -- the dark-skinned Ja’ffa and the woman with hair as golden as the sand at day break and eyes like jade -- rested in Dahn’yel’s tent. The only one who had not retired for the evening sat opposite them beside the crackling fire, his strange weapon cradled to his chest.

“Dahn’yel?” Kewa whispered into the night between them. The old man looked up at them, but Kewa paid him no mind. “May I ask a question?”

“As always, Kewa,” Dahn’yel responded in his broken, slightly accented speech. The naturally odd voice of a foreigner. His clever, sky-colored eyes crinkled with amusement, as if he could sense the disquiet Kewa felt over this strange man. “Don’t be frightened of him. He would never hurt you.”

“He is strange. His hair is white, like clouds... like when the sun hits the water at high noon, and turns the _iteru aa_ into brightness that blinds the eyes.”

Dahn’yel laughed rich and deep, loudly enough that he brought pause to the night music of his people. They listened, as if overjoyed by the sound, delighted as always to hear him with such amusement. Dahn’yel spoke in that odd, guttural tongue to the old man and then laughed again at the dark look that overcame the man’s face.

Kewa was frightened, but the tight grasp on his hands gave him the courage to let his eyes travel up under his long hair. “He is not like you. He is different, yes?”

“I too am different, Kewa,” Dahn’yel said. Before them, beautiful patterns emerged on the thick parchment. “He was once my dearest friend, and is now my greatest hope.”

Together, they gently finished the last line of simple words Dahn’yel had taught him to read and write. Simple words yes, but with them the power to destroy all limitations at the hands of the false gods. Beautiful words.

Dahn’yel’s smile was enough to bring all the joy of the world to Kewa’s heart, and he too smiled his pride in his accomplishment. “I will one day be a scribe in a temple, brother Dahn’yel. I will write the past of my people in the clay, for all to remember.”

“Yes,” Dahn’yel said, as if he knew this to be fact. “You will write the great histories, Kewa; you will be famous for your prose, your beautiful way with language.”

The fire crackled around the pot sitting in it’s midst, browning softly in the lively embers. Dahn’yel’s rich and earthen scent, the roughness of his hands, and the simpleness of his dress warm against Kewa’s small body would follow him all the days of his life. As would the gentle way Dahn’yel regarded this strange and exotic man from the north, so pale and yet with wrinkled golden skin that spoke of much time in the sun. A man of many contradictions, from the firm line of his mouth to the strange softness of his dark, deep eyes.

Those same dark eyes trained themselves on Daniel and didn’t look away.

Night fell. The sun slid behind the horizon in the far distance, and the richness of Egypt slipped in. Children were put to bed and conversation between the elder members of the group began. They drank barley beer through cork sieves and talked amongst themselves until the moon lay high in the sky, sprawled as lusciously as a beckoning lover, with a million stars to accent her beauty.

When Daniel finally looked up from his careful whittling, even the unmistakable gasps and moans of love making had ended. Silence truly reigned for the first time since that morning; the deep, endless quiet filled with the crackling flames, the scrape of metal on wood, and the popping wood to accompany the shared breaths of the two men sitting with the fire between them.

“So.”

Daniel never looked up from the wood he was manipulating in his hands. “So.”

“Got a nice... set up here.”

“Yes, I do.” He still didn’t look up. “You should be in bed, Colonel. There’s a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I know.” Jack didn’t move. The fire popped quietly. In the distance a crane cawed, hooting her goodnight. “You’ve been here for a while,” he said conversationally, poking the fire with a twig.

“Five years.”

“Huh.” He paused in his stick poking. The fire seemed to thank him, and gave a somewhat cheery pop. “Can I ask you something?”

“Depends on what that something is. You know I’m no good with the time continuum stuff.”

“It’s not that. God, please, not that. We had to hike through a jungle and when there’s nothing more to listen to than some blond scientist off on a tangent over how we’d messed up time...” Jack shifted uncomfortably. “Not that I mind, much, but... I just want to know about the real time line.”

Daniel paused in his whittling and looked up. The half-done lion sat in the long, pale rags of his lap. “In my time, the right time and chain of events, we worked together at the SGC. We’ve been going through the Stargate for eight years. I know it sounds stupid, but we’ve faced everything together. You, the you I knew, was my best friend.”

“Huh.”

Daniel quirked a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “A little too much to take in, I know.” 

He set his whittling to the side, dusted his robes off in a shower of small wooden splinters that made the fire roar happily, and before Jack could ask where he was going, Daniel stepped into his tent. He emerged, mere moments later, carrying a small basket with him. “If you’re going to poke the fire,” he said, sliding a morsel left over from their supper onto Jack’s stick, “you might as well get something out of it.”

Jack’s grin brightened his entire face. “Hey now. That’s what I like to see.” He stuck the stick back into the flames to Daniel’s accompanying chuckle, and studied him silently. “Hey, listen... can I ask you something?”

“You already said that.”

“Humor me.”

Daniel glanced up from his own stick. “Depends, then. What do you want to know?”

“How are you less... you know.”

“You know?”

“Yeah. You know.” Jack waved a hand. 

To which Daniel stared at him.

Jack exhaled noisily. “A geek. A nerd. A dork. A geeky, nerdy dork?”

Daniel’s lips quirked. “As opposed to...?”

“My time-line Jackson.”

“Nerd?”

“Ho-yeah. Little black glasses, long floppy hair, Academic chic. So, what made you.... you know.”

“I know?”

“Not so... dorky.”

“Trying to tell me you think I’m cool, Jack?” Amusement colored Daniel’s tone.

“You know what I mean.”

Daniel glanced sideways at him calmly. “I got married. My wife was taken by the Goa’uld, then murdered before my eyes by one of my closest friends. I grew up.”

Silence.

Jack stared at him. “Hey, look...”

“It’s all right, Colonel. It was a long time ago.”

They both went back to staring at the meat crackling and browning in the fire. It was Jack, a few minutes later, who broke the silence between them. “You were, uh, married? If you don’t mind my asking about... y’know.”

“Her name was Shau're. I met her when we opened the Stargate, on our first mission to Abydos.” Daniel glanced up from the meat to gaze off into the night, at the long barley fields illuminated by moonlight. “She was a beautiful woman. Playful. Always had a nice word, always had a laugh. She was a wonderful woman, and I loved her more than I think even I know sometimes.”

Daniel glanced up, then, the memory sliding off of the mask of his face. “I wish I could change what happened to her, but I can't.” Daniel paused and studied Jack’s face silently. “Just like you can’t change what happened to your son.”

The shock on Jack’s face was nearly audible. “How do you know?” 

“Because you told me so.” Daniel’s eyes were trained somewhere over Jack’s shoulder. “He was Jack’s whole world, and Jack loved him with his entire heart. He killed himself with Jack’s gun, and until the moment Jack died, he carried that guilt inside of himself. But instead of hiding, he used the strength it brought him and kept more families in tact than either of us can count.”

Jack’s stunned anger came off of him in waves. “How dare you, how fucking _dare_ you...”

Daniel tipped his head and shifted his gaze back to burning brown eyes. “I know, Colonel. Because my wife died so that I could be right there beside you, helping you save the world time and time again.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. My son was my _family_. How can you be so calm about it? Your wife was your family!”

Daniel leaned across the fire and lifted Jack’s stick and nearly-burned meat from the flames. “Yes, she was. We can’t change the circumstances. There are constants out there in the universe, things we can’t stop from happening, but that we can change through our actions. Right now, right _now_ , there are millions of people stranded out there on different planets, people who are _our_ people. People who, in the next few thousand years, will be murdered en masse. Women will be raped, children will be killed, men will be turned into Hosts and enslaved by the Goa’uld.” 

He looked up at Jack from the meat he was carefully stripping from the stick. “We changed those things. We’ve saved countless civilizations, contacted people more advanced than us, and fought the Goa’uld to the best of our ability. We’re standing up for ourselves, and the Goa’uld hate us. That’s what spurred this on in the first place. We would have never messed with time if there wasn’t a valid reason to do so.” He shook his head and carefully ate one of the strips of meat. The natural oil in the meat made his fingertips glisten in the firelight. “It’s better if you don't ask anymore questions, Colonel. With any luck this’ll all be for moot tomorrow, and things will be as they should be.”

They fell into a strange silence. Not quite companionable by any means, but far from uncomfortable. Daniel’s passionate defense of his life’s work lay heavy between them, as did his uneasy dismissal of it.

Jack never looked up from his stick. “You’re not at all like the other Jackson.”

“Whiny, contrived, too brilliant by half but blind to the hand in front of his face?”

“On the money. He was a good kid, though.”

Daniel snorted quietly.

“What?”

“By your time line standards, I was almost forty. I’m forty four, now.”

“Hey. You’re not old till you’ve hit the big 5-0.”

“Of course. You’ve got one foot in the grave, the other propping up your fishing pole.”

A wistful smile crossed Jack’s face, small and too-soon gone, but a smile nonetheless. “I miss my boat.”

“Sam told me.” Daniel became very interested in sliding another piece of meat, and a thick barley paste, onto his stick. “The Jack O’Neill I knew didn’t run away from his life after Charlie died. He wanted to, granted, but he didn’t. He embraced his life.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed the smallest bit. “I didn’t run away. And don’t talk about my kid, dammit.”

Daniel’s brow arched clear to his hairline. “You didn’t run away.” He glanced back down to his stick as he carefully nudged it into the fire. The flames licked around the meat and coarse bread. “Our first mission was to Abydos, before we ever met Sam and Teal’c. I was still wet behind the ears, you were tough-as-nails. You, uh, hated me on sight.”

Jack raised his own brow at the amusement in Daniel’s voice.. “Really?” he drawled.

“I was an annoying little punk, I’ll give you that. The mission was practically a suicide mission. No one knew if we were going to make it home, alive or otherwise, and you sure as hell knew you weren’t. You’d volunteered to detonate this... _huge_ warhead and blow Abydos to hell, to stop a threat we could only vaguely conceive at the time.”

“I’m guessing I didn’t.”

“Nope. In fact, you let me stay, and I got you and the others home. When you came back a year later... you were a different person.” Daniel shook his head, throwing a few of the wood shavings at his feet into the fire. “Maybe we both were, I don’t know.”

Jack’s eyes were hard. “You telling me that this... mission made me get over losing my kid?”

“No.” Daniel looked up. “No. You could no sooner get over losing your son than I could losing my wife. But we live with it, and we move on, and in some ways time dulls the pain. It gets to the point where you can think about them, their smiles and laughter, and remember the happiness through the grief.” 

Jack sat silent for one long, tense moment. “You're not at all like the other Jackson."

“A special little boy told me once that a man is the sum of his experience."

"Your son?"

"Sort of.” 

“You were right. Too smart by half.”

“Of course, the only time you’d ever acknowledge it was when we were both living in a reality outside time’s true continuum,” Daniel said without glancing up. The curve of his lips was shadowed in the darkness.

The crackle of the fire, red hot and leaping into the night with each cool breeze, soothed rather than impassioned. Both of them felt the sparks.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“The Jack I remember wasn’t nearly so inquisitive,” Daniel answered back, glancing up under his impossibly long eyelashes. The lines at the corners of his eyes were furrowed deep, either from sorrow or from joy.

“Was he?”

Daniel blinked. “What?”

“Your Jack.”

“What about my Jack?”

“Inquisitive. Was he inquisitive? Who was he? What happened to him? Can’t help but notice you were pretty vague when Dr. Carter, the Jaffa and myself got here.”

“Teal’c.”

“What?” 

“His name is Teal’c.” Daniel sighed and shook his head, spearing another piece of meat onto his stick to put in the fire. “There’s not much to say. You were all killed within a few months of our arrival.”

“I think we both know there’s more to it than that,” Jack said. “Look, if I’m putting my keister on the line here I want some reassurance there’s a _possibility_ we’re gonna get out of this alive.”

If Daniel’s eyes were a little too bright. Lucky for him they’d both blame it on the firelight. “There’s just not much to tell.”

“Try me anyway.”

Daniel’s eyes, an endless blue eyes as jaded as Jack’s, gazed into the fire. “We’d been here for a few months. Four or five – I remember because it was a few days before my fortieth birthday.” He looked down at his hands. “We’d been around long enough to understand their was unrest among the locals over Ra’s domination. Not just here but all up and down the Nile, as far away as the Delta. We tried too much too fast.”

“What do you mean?”

Daniel shrugged. “We thought we could make an impact. We got too excited; I didn’t realize that the pace of life here and the pace of life we were used to were drastically different. We overcompensated, over-thought... I should have realized it, but I didn’t.” A firmer nudge into the fire sent the flames licking up. “Jack, Sam and I were working in Ra’s temple, trying to recruit his workers from within so when it all went to hell he wouldn’t have his men to rely on. We were ratted out and caught, it’s as simple as that.”

“Ratted out?”

“Yeah, by one of the peasants we’d recruited and should have never trusted. Ra wanted us to answer for our crimes.”

“Like, oh, trying to start a rebellion.”

“Something like that. He ordered us dead.” Daniel looked up, then. His eyes were devoid of emotion. “Teal’c was hiding among Ra’s Jaffa. He tried to save all three of us, but...” He shook his head and pulled the burnt meat from the fire, never giving it a second look. “Ra had them dismembered in a public viewing, as a warning to other potential wrong-doers.” 

Jack didn’t look up from Daniel’s shaking hands, tucked between the knees of his robes. He exhaled slowly. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault.” The haunted eyes spoke another story, but Jack didn’t pry. “We should have known better, but we didn’t. It’s like a whole different world here. How we all stayed alive as long as we did is amazing, actually.”

Jack eyed him. “They were your friends.”

“They were my family. Sam was the sister I never had, Teal’c the big brother.”

“And me?”

The facade crumbled the smallest bit. “Sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe, you know? He was a good man, a wonderful man. I loved him so much.” Something washed over Jack’s face, there and gone again. The moment was over, and he was back to being calm, confident...beautiful. “You seem shocked.”

Jack ran a hand through the graying tips of his hair and exhaled noisily. “To find out I was a homo in another life? Yeahsureyoubetcha.” 

“Jack was the least homosexual man I’ve ever known.”

“I’d say you and him bein’ together qualifies, don’t you think?”

“It’s not like that at all – Jack was straight. He had charm to spare.” He glanced up. “He just loved me, in every sense of the word.” When Jack arched a brow Daniel waved his right hand. “Widower, remember?”

Jack looked so serious and so uneasy for a moment that Daniel couldn’t help asking, “What?”

“You aren’t gonna.... you know,” he waved a hand around, as if that said anything. 

Had he been speaking to anyone but Daniel Jackson, they’d have stared at him like he were insane. But he _was_ talking to Daniel Jackson, who had spent eight years side by side with the man. Daniel was fluent in 23 languages, including Russian, French, Arabic, and Jack’s Body Language. “Fall over your lap like some demented six-foot prima-donna damsel in distress?”

Jack had the decency to blush.

“I loved him a lot. What we had was good.”

“Was he...uh,” Jack cleared his throat.

“What?”

“Good for you. Was he good for you?”

“He was good for me. I tried to be good for him too, even if I was an annoying shit sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

“Okay, most of the time.” Daniel’s lips curved gently, as if he had a special secret. “He led a good life, my Jack. Lots of pain, but lots of laughter too. He died like he’d have wanted to, in the heat of battle, whooping some ass.”

“But he left you alone. I’d have never left you alone.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“But you shouldn’t have had to. He should have been here to do it for you,” Jack said. There was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before, and his pulse was jumping in his throat. “He had you, and he should have taken care of you. And stop fuckin’ calling me ‘Colonel’, will you?”

“That’s a double standard, and you know it.” Daniel’s eyes, the shade of cobalt blue, glowed in his face. “Couldn’t have gone down any other way, just like I can’t look at you and see my Jack, because you’re not. You’re better, and you’re worse, and you’re different. I’m different than the Daniel you knew, too.”

“But Jackson wasn’t my lover.”

“No, he wasn’t. Your paths never crossed because you were hiding on your boat and Daniel was hiding in a classroom. The thing is, you can’t spend your life hiding or you’ll never find the gifts that were meant for you.”

"What the hell does that mean?" Jack put his P-90 in the sand between and kicked out with the butt of it. The fire protested. "That if I'd never met Daniel he'd still be safe in his classroom instead of having a snake put in his head and shot by one of his teammates?" 

Daniel's voice didn't raise to match Jack's angry shouting. "No, Colonel. Whether or not you met Daniel had nothing to do with it. Daniel was slated to come on this mission because I did. He had to be here, because I was there."

“He was a civilian. He had no place on a team, with no training and no way to defend himself. That guy had never thrown a punch in his life, let alone killed to save his own bacon.”

Silence reigned for a minute...more. Jack’s angry breaths filled the quiet, flaming his cheeks with anger and what could only be despair.

It was only when Jack calmed that Daniel stood from his spot and moved to sit next to him on the rock before the fire. He never looked at him as he spoke. “No matter how much you wish it, no matter how much guilt and remorse you feel, there was nothing you could have done to change what happened to him, just like there’s nothing Jack could have done to change what’s going to happen to me.” Daniel paused. "I was a civilian too, just like your Daniel was. My Jack had the time to teach me what I needed to know, how to take care of myself. You never had that with Daniel, and I'm sorry. But my Jack trusted me to do what needed to be done without breathing down my neck, and I'm not going to let him down. And if that means I have to die, then I'll die. I've done it before, and I'm not afraid of it any longer." 

"So what the hell does that mean, O’ Wise One," Jack snarled, glaring angrily into the dunes stretched out beyond the small tribes encampment. 

"It means that tomorrow we're going to die trying to set things right," Daniel said softly. 

“Fuck that,” Jack hissed. He leapt to his feet and began to pace back and forth, gun forgotten in the sand. The fire roared almost in answer to the anger in his voice. “God dammit! You think you know everything, sitting here telling me about how things should be, but it’s _you_ who don’t know anything.”

“I know what Jack did for me,” Daniel said, his voice calm in the face of Jack’s fury. 

“No, you don’t! He should have never given you up! He should have never put you in danger in the first place! You’re sitting here, ready to die at the age of forty _fucking_ five because he wasn’t here to help you do the right thing!” Jack threw his hands in the air. “And hell, maybe it is. We’ve come all this way for it, after all, it’s got to be right? But he shoulda never put himself in danger, knowing he could die and _leave you here alone!”_

“I’m a big boy, Jack.” Daniel’s voice was a shadow of its former self – there was spit and fire in his words now. “He trusted me to do what was right. I don’t need anyone taking care of me and I sure as hell don’t need a keeper.”

“If you had a keeper you wouldn’t be ready to die tomorrow!” Jack yelled back. Where a different Jack in a different time would have never touched Daniel, this one took him by the shoulders and gave him a hard shake. “All your god damned sanctimonious bullshit means _squat_ , you hear me? You take care of the people who are close to you, because if not... if not...“ 

He let go of Daniel and strode half into the night, so angry he shook from head to toe. His fingers curled, as if they’d willingly go around Daniel’s neck. “Dammit Daniel, If he’d done right by you he’d be beside you. He can’t have loved you like you think if he had no problem putting his life on the line, no _matter_ how good the cause was. I think he was a fucking grade A bastard who left a _kid_ in the middle of Ancient Egypt so he could play hero. I take care of the things I love, and you can _never_ convince me he loved you when he ditched you here by yourself!”

“No.”

“Oh yes. He didn’t give a damn about you if he left you here to pick up the pieces, bury your friends, and try to live the rest of your life... like this!”

“No!”

“I think he was an arrogant bastard who never realized what he had. It’s a piss-poor reflection on me, and I hate that it’s the last way you’ll ever remember him,” Jack hissed.

“You’re wrong,” Daniel said, so softly Jack had to strain to hear him. “What we fought for, lived for, died for... it was worth it. That’s what you could never understand.” He looked up, crystal tears caught in his long lashes. They glowed in the firelight. “What we’re going to do tomorrow is bigger than you and me, bigger than Jack or Sam or Teal’c.”

He stood and caught Jack’s shoulder as he passed angrily by, so the man had no choice but to stop his angry stalking. “We’re doing this for ourselves, so that in the right time and right place, my Jack never dies. We’re doing this so one day we can build a house out there where his cabin is. We’re doing this so he can finally get a dog and I can finally write a book. We’re doing this so one day we can spoil Sam’s kids rotten and finally take Teal’c to a football game. We’re doing this so one day we’ll grow old together, Jack.”

Jack couldn’t seem to catch a breath. Between the soft word and the roaring fire... it was a paradise unto itself. Daniel’s thumb gently stroked Jack’s jaw, so softly it was as sweet as a lovers touch. The tears in his eyes spilled over, and Jack thought he’d never met a more courageous man in his life. “Jack loved me so much that he gave his life for what we were working towards. He died because he knew I could fix things the way they should be. Does that sound like a selfish man, Jack?”

“No.” Carefully, slowly, he touched Daniel’s hand on his face. All the tension ran from his body. “He died for you.”

“He died to save us all.” Daniel stroked his hand through the soft gray of Jack’s hair, and carefully squeezed his neck. “He and I, Jack and Daniel, O’Neill and Jackson, were meant for each other. Everywhere, every time, everyplace.” 

“Even if it means we die tomorrow?”

“Even then.” He squeezed again. “Don’t you understand, Jack? If it means bleeding for it, aching for it, dying for it, then it’s _worth_ it, because _we_ were worth it, even if it costs everything.”

Jack closed his eyes and lowered his head. “No one ever loved me that much.” 

They turned away from the fire together. 

The tent flap closed behind them. The meat on the stick still in the fire smoked up towards the brilliant canopy of stars, and in the far distance, silhouetted by the moon, the pyramids laughed at time.

. 

“Uh, Jack, you should say something here.”

The computer screen flickered on the four occupants in the room. The Zero Point Module sat in it’s packing crate to the left, and beside it Jack’s mid-morning snack sat forgotten where it would stay until Sam threw it out tomorrow, just like always.

“Um, college football is played on Saturdays; pro on Sundays; and there are no fish in my pond ... at all ... where I fish. Uh, I think that covers it for me. All that can be said on record, anyway.” On the screen Jack glanced back at Daniel. Daniel merely gazed up at him, unmistakable love in his eyes. 

Sam reached out and shut off the camera, cheeks flushed. The constant buzzing and droning that usually only registered as background noise was strangely loud in the small lab Carter called her own. “Is that correct?”

“I think so,” Jack said. Daniel stood behind Jack, tinged red in the cheeks and trying his hardest not to look up at Teal’c arched brow.

“Apparently nothing we did affected the time line,” Sam said. At least she was amused.

“But we didn’t do anything.”

“Not yet. Apparently we were going to, two weeks from now, but now we don’t have to.”

“Excellent! That’s it, I like it!” Jack clapped his hands. “Dismissed, folks.” He snatched the back of Daniel’s jacket and pulled him back. “Except for you, Doctor Has-No-Discretion.”

Sam hung back as Teal’c bowed out gracefully, her dimples winking on in each cheek. “We still on for tonight, sir? Pete hasn’t called, so I’m assuming he got the reservations.”

“I’ll have Daniel at Nemo’s by eight, not to worry.”

“See that you do. Free margaritas till eleven,” she sang, and left. 

And if she heard Daniel laughing, and the unmistakable sound of a smacking kiss, well, she didn’t have to necessarily ask, and if she didn’t ask she wouldn’t have anyone to tell.

.

Under the rich Egyptian sunset, a small house stood before a field of crops sown and cared for with love. Two old men stood embracing, listening to the chimes and flutes of the evening celebration thanking the gods for one more day enjoyed to the fullest. The taller leaned down to press a loud, smacking kiss on an upturned, wrinkled cheek.

Daniel laughed.


End file.
